Cat Without a Nose

by Irene Vasquez
(National City, Ca. 91950)

I was never really was a cat person. Then about 8 yrs ago we moved to National City….Feral CAT Capital of the world. I’d never seen so many kittens. It seemed they were all coming from the same cat. We call her Mama cat. We would try and catch the kittens. So that we could tend to their ailments (thank God for the internet!). A few kittens were abandoned at birth and we neutured them until they were old enough to be placed in a good home.

Mama cat has always had this upper respiratory illness and so did her kittens. In the last year she has become very scruffy and her nose began to run alot.

She developed a scab and soon little by little her nose began to disappear. When I see her I feel this zap in my spine as I could feel her pain, my heart sinks. Mama cat has made a huge impact on my life. She has taught me how important it is to spay or neuter your cat.

I have three rescued cats, all neutered. The youngest Ballou is actually her son – she left behind placenta and all! Mama has opened my heart to all animals in need. And for that she is a hero. She’s still quick, cheating death. I guess I’m just waiting for her to slow down enough to take her to the vet and have her put down. I just don’t want her to suffer for long.

Irene

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Cat Without a Nose

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Jan 07, 2010

Cat without a nose
by: Irene Vasquez

UPDATE
Mama cat wandered away one day in November and never returned. I had talked to a vet about her and the Dr. said it sounded as if Mama had devevloped a severe upper respitory infection that lead to the development of some kind of fungus. The only way to have prevented it was to have to have treated it in the beginning.

Jan 01, 2010

my feral cat is now missing her nose as well
by: Anonymous

What did you do for your feral cat? We inherited ours from our next door neighbor who moved away. Her feral car didn’t want to move with her and decided to adopt us. About a year ago we noticed a big scab on her nose. After weeks the scab fell off. Little by little so has most of her nose. She is now missing her nose almost entirely and just has an exposed raw piece of skin where the top part of her nose used to be. I’ve become very attached to our cat, although she won’t really come near us, and it kills me to see her like this. What can we do?
Thank you.

Aug 20, 2009

I feel like you
by: Anonymous

Thanks for your story. Like you I feel the pain and discomfort of these long suffering feral cats. Some people can feel the pain of these animals and it affects the character of the person, a lot. Others can’t empathize at all and they are the ones who can hurt cats rather than help them.

Please comment here using either Facebook or WordPress (when available).

I picked up a desperate looking tiny female one hot afternoon who was walking in the middle of the road with an occasional car zooming by.

She acted as my long lost friend. I called her stinky and brought her to a friend who does a lot of farming and told him he should take her. No, I have 8 males, no space for a sickly looking female. Safe to bring home to my home as I had 12, well thought it was ok, I had an 18 year old a 4 year old, 2 year old and and 8 babies, she being the 12th in total.

Well, I had only had 3 at the most cats or any pet just 2 months prior so? what’s one more? well 2 weeks later all my adult cats were walking around with raw flesh for noses and I was flippin out, all 12 were brought to the vet clinic pronto at my farmers friends expense and were given high doses of antibiotics and within a couple weeks sadly Stinky who was very ill, passed away although her nose was fine.

She was very old, i discovered from the vet, and was maybe a tough little barn cat that wandered too far and in the heat drank something she should not of.

I have to think she had fun. My vet did not know where this disorder came from? but assumed because only the adult caught this disorder the stray deposited the virus into the food / water bowl or litter box. the kittens had soft canned food and were fed away from the adults. otherwise they played and crawled on her and mingled with her until the day she passed. all the others recovered 100% The treatments were daily for a while I cannot recall the amount of days but I have not heard of this happening before, and I have no idea how your animals contracted it, unless like this little lady could have been a bug bite, or bird or mouse she ate?

she was in a very sandy dry area with swamp pockets, a lot of mosquitoes and frogs, spiders and beetles. It was early June when I found her. It came on quick and one morning after only a week at most of her being there, I woke up and my cats greeted me with flaps of their noses hanging off it was sad and scary and gross all at the same time. exposed white nasty moist looking skin, similar to say a scab falling off too early. YuK!

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Comments

Cat Without a Nose — 4 Comments

anonymous on March 1, 2014 at 11:21 am said:
I had to surrender my cat to the local shelter because of this. Her nose was all bloody, peices of it looked like it was even falling off. She wasn’t even a year old yet. I wish I had the money for a vet.. I just couldnt have her around my other cats. The lady that looked at her said to disinfect everything & just hope the others don’t get sick. I hated the way they took her from me. My cat gave me this look like she was wondering why I was handing her over to a stranger. It breaks my heart…
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- Michael Broad on March 1, 2014 at 11:33 am said:
  Thanks for this harrowing comment. What happened? Please provide more detail.
  Reply ↓
kayleen on April 7, 2013 at 8:10 am said:
I picked up a desperate looking tiny female one hot afternoon who was walking in the middle of the road with an occasional car zooming by.
She acted as my long lost friend. I called her stinky and brought her to a friend who does a lot of farming and told him he should take her. No, I have 8 males, no space for a sickly looking female. Safe to bring home to my home as I had 12, well thought it was ok, I had an 18 year old a 4 year old, 2 year old and and 8 babies, she being the 12th in total.
Well, I had only had 3 at the most cats or any pet just 2 months prior so? what’s one more? well 2 weeks later all my adult cats were walking around with raw flesh for noses and I was flippin out, all 12 were brought to the vet clinic pronto at my farmers friends expense and were given high doses of antibiotics and within a couple weeks sadly Stinky who was very ill, passed away although her nose was fine.
She was very old, i discovered from the vet, and was maybe a tough little barn cat that wandered too far and in the heat drank something she should not of.
I have to think she had fun. My vet did not know where this disorder came from? but assumed because only the adult caught this disorder the stray deposited the virus into the food / water bowl or litter box. the kittens had soft canned food and were fed away from the adults. otherwise they played and crawled on her and mingled with her until the day she passed. all the others recovered 100% The treatments were daily for a while I cannot recall the amount of days but I have not heard of this happening before, and I have no idea how your animals contracted it, unless like this little lady could have been a bug bite, or bird or mouse she ate?
she was in a very sandy dry area with swamp pockets, a lot of mosquitoes and frogs, spiders and beetles. It was early June when I found her. It came on quick and one morning after only a week at most of her being there, I woke up and my cats greeted me with flaps of their noses hanging off it was sad and scary and gross all at the same time. exposed white nasty moist looking skin, similar to say a scab falling off too early. YuK!
Reply ↓
- Michael on April 7, 2013 at 8:30 am said:
  I’ll look into this. It is interesting to me. It seems like a particularly nasty viral infection that also created a secondary bacterial infection which attacked the fabric of the nose. Sound horrible.
  Reply ↓